4 player adaptor coming soon

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dee2eR
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4 player adaptor coming soon

Post by dee2eR » Wed Aug 08, 2018 3:50 pm

I'm most of the way through designing a 4 player adaptor for the RaspberryJAMMA and thought it would be a good idea to ask for input before finalizing the PCB. As I have it now it should be a direct plug in for any (*I think* I found a document with the details of all(?) of them but I may have missed something) Konami 4 player cab or a NBA Jam cab (not sure if the NBA Jam 3 and 4 player harness' are used in anything else). If you were adding the 4 player wiring to a cab they're 15 pin headers. It will also have a few extra tact switch buttons onboard for those whose cabs don't have service and test buttons wired, etc - no point going into their functions too much as like everything else Pi related you will be able to set them to do whatever you need (assuming the emulator supports whatever that is of course).

Physically it will be pretty small and fit onto the RaspberryJAMMAs 40 pin header, the ribbon cable from the Pi will then go to the 4 Player board. The resulting board will be about 55% longer than the RaspberryJAMMA without the adaptor as it hangs off the side.

I'm planning to wire the unused pins of the Konami headers so a 4 player 6 buttons each setup could be made, although I suspect there's not many games demanding it (maybe console stuff?). If anyone knows of any reason not to do it I will drop it due to the lack of stuff that would actually use 6 buttons.

There's not really space for any extra components but I would love to hear if I've forgotten the one feature you would want in a four player adaptor or any other thoughts you may have. Also I'm up on the fence about the spelling of adaptor, adapter is more common and the spell check doesn't hate it but I keep typing adaptor...

Software wise there will be an option in the service menu of ARpiCADE to switch support for the 4 player board on/off, I would prefer not to have to make two different versions so automating the changes seemed best. As always I welcome ideas on the software side too but it's easier to change software after the fact than PCBs so it's not as crucial to chime in now.

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